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Reacting to a downturn - Floyd Norris of the New York Times

I ran into Floyd in Davos, and he picked up an observation I made about how people respond to bad news. You can find it at this link.

The essential idea is that there is an emotional journey that people go through in the course of adapting to a changed situation. The original work was done by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her study of people confronting their own mortality.

It usually begins with “shock”. As in “this can’t be happening”. Moves on to denial, then often sadness, then anger, then eventually bargaining and acceptance. The dilemma is often that people get stuck in one or another stage, and until they’ve worked through it all, little progressive change can happen.